Michael Ledeen’s Fingers in the Niger Yellowcake

Kurt Nimmo, Another day in the empire

October 25, 2005

Some of us, those who pay attention, have
suspected for some time the fraudulent Niger yellowcake documents—so
crudely slapped together as to be laughable—are tied to Michael Ledeen,
the neocon’s neocon, who is connected to the neofascist Italian
military intelligence agency, SISMI. Ledeen’s role in dispensing these
bogus documents—a puzzle piece fitting into the larger scam used as a
pretext by Bush and Crew to invade a helpless Iraq—is so well-known it
has made it into the Wikipedia entry on the yellowcake forgery:

In
an interview published April 7, 2005, [Vincent Cannistraro, the former
head of counterterrorism operations at the CIA and the intelligence
director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan] was
asked by Ian Masters what he would say if it was asserted that the
source of the forgery was former National Security Council and State
Department consultant Michael Ledeen. (Ledeen had also allegedly been a
liaison between the American Intelligence Community and SISMI two
decades earlier.) Cannistraro answered by saying: "you’d be very close."

Ledeen’s
connection to SISMI goes way back—all the way back to Ledeen fingering
the late and pathetic brother of Jimmy Carter, Billy, for allegedly
hanging out with Yasser Arafat and George Habash, a PLO military
leader, in Libya in October of 1978. Ledeen accused Carter of taking
loans and expense money from the Libyans. (Obviously, this an old
trick, used over and over, as the neocons now accuse British MP George
Galloway of taking money from Saddam).

"'SISMI was the
architect of the scandal over Billy Carter,’ and that the material in
this case was gathered mostly by Pazienza [a SISMI agent] and by his
American friend Michael Ledeen," Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead
write in their book, The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection
(Sheridan Square Publications, 1986). As it turns out, Francesco
Pazienza "was ultimately indicted in an Italian court (with Ledeen as
an unindicted co-conspirator) for luring President Carter’s brother
Billy into a compromising relationship with Qaddafi during the 1980
presidential campaign," explain Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott,
and Jane Hunter (The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert
Operations in Reagan Era,1987). In short, Ledeen is a dirty trickster,
having cavorted with fascist elements in SISMI to undermine a
presidential election in the United States. (see the Wikipeadia entry
on Ledeen.)

As
usual, though, when dealing with all things neocon, it gets worse.
"Negroponte. Ledeen. Boykin. North. Kerek. If these figures make you
uneasy, they should. An Italian investigation has uncovered an
underground, parallel police network with possible links to the CIA
which may be involved in the slaying of Niccola Calipari and Il Diario
reporter Enzo Baldoni, the extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar and
Nigergate," the Daily Kos wrote in July.

Abu Omar (aka Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr) was the CIA asset (according to the Chicago Tribune)
kidnapped off the streets of Milan (subsequently to disappear, a not
uncommon fate for CIA assets). Niccola Calipari was a SISMI agent shot
and killed while escorting the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena out
of Iraq after she was released from kidnappers. Both Sgrena and Enzo
Baldoni were working on Fallujah stories when they were abducted
(Baldoni was executed).

Many
members of Operation Gladio were also in a shadowy organization known
as P-2; it too was financed by the CIA. P-2 had connections with the
Vatican and the Mafia, and eventually with an international fascist
umbrella organization called the World Anti-Communist League…. One of
P-2’s specialties was the art of provocation. Leftist organizations
like the Red Brigades were infiltrated, financed and / or created, and
the resulting acts of terrorism, like the assassination of Italy’s
premier in 1978 and the bombing of the railway station in Bologna in
1980, were blamed on the left. The goal of this "strategy of tension"
was to convince Italian voters that the left was violent and
dangerous-by helping make it so.

It appears
Michael Ledeen, the "influential" neocon, was involved in Gladio
operations past and is also linked to the faux Niger yellowcake
documents cooked up by Italian intelligence, as noted above.

Now we have Laura Rozen,
citing a scoop from the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, telling us
Nicolo Pollari, chief of the fascist SISMI, "brought the Niger
yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent
overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001
and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq
had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British
intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves
purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax." Pollari met
with none other than Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
"Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House
campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq
was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear
weapons…. La Repubblica also quotes a Bush administration official
saying, 'I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, General Nicolo
Pollari met Stephen Hadley.’"

Let’s review: Ledeen is
suspected of working on the forged Niger yellowcake documents and
Nicolo Pollari, chief of the fascist SISMI, passed these off to the
highest levels of the Bush administration, and these documents played a
big part in the invasion of Iraq and the mass murder of more than a
100,000 Iraqis.

Sounds like the stuff of impeachment to me.

I might as well wish for a pony.

Ledeen
is apparently sensitive about his role in the creation of the fake
Niger documents. "When I posted a rumor pointing in the direction of
the best-known SISMI-connected neocon player, Michael Ledeen, who was a
big wheel in Iran-contra, Ledeen emailed me to deny that he had any
involvement with the forgeries," writes blogger Steve Sailer.

Meanwhile, blogger Scott Horton has called for Fitzgerald to indict Ledeen.

Horton writes:

As
far as Ledeen and the Niger uranium forgeries, [former CIA and DIA
agent Philip Giraldi] explained in [interviews with Horton] that the
"couple of CIA agents" were paid in foreign accounts and that
Fitzgerald had "already found the money trail." Ledeen’s connections to
the Office of Special Plans and Sismi are well documented, he attended
a number of meetings in Italy with Harold Rhode, who "practically lived
out of (Iranian spy) Ahmad Chalabi’s office," Manucher Ghorbanifar and
guilty Israeli spy Larry Franklin, around the time the Italians began
passing on the (already debunked) story back to the US.

Thus,
as Horton contends, Michael Ledeen should be indicted. Of course, that
would shed an immense amount of light on the whole neocon operation and
send the neocon rats scurrying to cut deals with Fitzgerald.

It would be heavenly music.

But it ain’t gonna happen.

Unfortunately,
in Bushzarro world, this scenario is against the laws of physics.
Hadley or Scooter Libby or on the outside Rove (certainly not Cheney)
will have the tender sides of their wrists slapped, maybe even be
indicted and prosecuted, only to be pardoned by Bush on the day he
leaves office—if he ever leaves office. It’s just too much to expect
Fitzgerald to be a Samson and bring down the whole sordid house of
cards.

Plamegate will be a taint. It will not be the beginning of the end of the Bushcons.

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